


hollow

by Val_Creative



Series: IT Movies Fic-Palooza 2019 [33]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Dead Georgie Denbrough, Deadlights (IT), Drug Use, Eddie Kaspbrak is So Done, Emotional Hurt, Friendship/Love, Hallucinations, Humor, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mild Gore, Minor Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Spirits, Stanley Uris is a Good Friend, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 23:08:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20956430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: After being aggressively exposed to the deadlights, Richie finds himself able to communicate with Pennywise’s victims.





	hollow

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by HowlingWendigos (AO3): "aftermath of Richie getting caught in the Deadlights and what it does to him." I liked the ideas you mentioned and really my brain went immediately to this kind of area. Crossing my fingers that people are interested in reading! Any comments/thoughts appreciated!

*

On Monday morning, Richie runs late. He's supposed to be on the train at Union Station around five forty-five am.

A cluster of strangers form, trickling out from the station's building with their carry-ons and purses and laptops. They keep themselves behind the grooved, yellow line, shuffling awkwardly and ignoring each other's presence. Typical.

Richie doesn't know how he spots her first—but a lady in a bright pink nurse's uniform walks forward purposely. Her head held high. The train roars and roars, nearing at high-speed, barrelling down the railroad tracks. She walks right _onto_ them.

Collective screaming.

One of the men closest to the tracks leans over, throwing out his arm for her to take. She doesn't. Richie doesn't know why she _doesn't_. A heavyset, muscular teenage boy grabs onto the man's jacket, tugging him back to safety.

What sounds like her thudding and splintering upon impact fills the horrified, gristly silence.

Chaos erupts. People flee back towards the other ends of the train station's platform, to the inner building. They holler for 911. Richie feels numbed-out, elbowed and knocked rudely into, watching the lady now on the yellow line. She's real. She _has_ to be.

Nobody hears or sees as she weeps, clutching onto herself. Her fearful, amber-brown eyes meeting Richie's face.

The weeping only intensifies.

*

A week later, he has to move out of his apartment.

Two men loiter, speaking furiously in Ukranian and making threatening gestures at each other.

It's too _loud_. Richie buys earplugs, but it's difficult to tune out when they're right over his bed, pulling on each other's beards. Well, _one_ of them has a beard. The one with a bullet-wound in his neck. There's no beard for the man with a gory, dark hole where his upper face had been.

Richie looks into it—back in 1940, two cousins killed each other on the property, guns drawn, over stolen livestock.

*

There's peace. For a little while.

Until he hears wet galoshes squeaking to the floorboards.

"Hi, Richie!"

A little boy in a floppy, yellow raincoat smiles and waves with his arm still intact. "Ohhh, fuck off," Richie moans out, shutting his eyes to deny himself the reality of what's happening and grinding his fingers over his lids. "_Ohhhh_."

Georgie's mouth drops open. "You said a bad word!" he yelps.

Somehow that just makes Richie huff-laugh, trembling and crying a little.

"Sorry, Georgie."

It's the first time Richie has attempted to talk to one of them. The hallucinations. But, it's Georgie—darling, dead _Georgie_.

"You recognize me?"

"I'm never gonna forget you," Richie admits quietly, smile-squinting at him. "You said I was one of your best friends."

"My _best_ best friend is Billy!" Georgie nods as he declares this with such enthusiasm that Richie almost forgets the bloody stump where Georgie's other arm is missing. Forgets that he's a grown man at forty-three and not twelve when Richie saw Georgie last on the playground. "I didn't say I was sorry," Georgie adds, tearful. "I lost it. Billy's gonna be so mad at me."

"Bill found your boat. Don't worry, Georgie," Richie whispers. "I think he's more sorry about not playing with you that day."

"That's not his fault. Billy was sick and didn't wanna play."

At the solemn and yet childish emotion in Georgie's smile, Richie's mouth quivers. "I'll tell him…" he says.

"You will?"

"I will."

"Thanks, Richie." Georgie beams, waving. "See ya later!"

*

It's the middle of the night when Richie opens up his closet, turning on the overhead light and searching for his Italian leather shoes.

Betty Ripsom, shredded down in half across her navel, stares up at him vacantly. Her dirty, bare toes wriggling.

_"Where's my shoe…?"_

Richie grasps onto the closet-door and the frame, his head hanging low. "Gone," he murmurs. "It's gone, Betty."

"Where are you?"

"Right here."

Betty lifts her eyebrows, frowning slightly. Richie lived down the street, playing basketball with her and the other little girl who went missing a year before Betty. Lori-Ann's corpse had been discovered in a storm-drain. Betty had been inconsolable, hugging a shocked, embarrassed Richie and weeping into his Metallica tee-shirt.

"Are you sure?" she asks.

Her response haunts him long after Betty disappears.

*

Richie soaks in blistering-hot water, leaning back fully in the tub and chugging down blackberry wine. The strong shit.

Helps sometimes. Richie concentrates less, fogging out his nightmarish hallucinations.

Toweling off, he steps out and pops a Valium resting on the toilet-seat, swallowing it dry. Richie glances around to Stanley, thirty-nine, undressed and partly submerged in red, red water. He's strikingly good-looking for being extremely fucking dead.

"I don't wanna hear a lecture…" Richie barks. He's seething instead, not grieving or terrified.

"You wouldn't listen even if I considered it, Trashmouth."

Stanley's mouth uplifts. Richie wants to laugh, but it comes out like a half-sob, half-growl.

"Why the _FUCK_ did you do it?" he asks Stanley, panting. "_WHY_ did you…?" Stanley doesn't answer, his wrists slit and bleeding, looking Richie over with a kind of sympathy that has Richie's vision greying out, his pulse too-fast. "I hate you."

"No. You don't."

_"Watch me."_

"I loved you. I loved all of you, Richie," Stanley explains. "The rest is faded out of time and memory."

He's way too fucking calm for him to deal with. Richie screams out, animalistic and uncontrollable, raking his nails with agonizing pressure over his face. He screams for Stanley to _leave, leave, leave him alone, fucking leave him alone_, until Richie's voice goes hoarse.

Richie pries his hands away, to the empty, drained tub and streaks of bright blood on his own flesh.

*

It'll take more drastic measures.

Richie drinks hard liquor for months, losing his already failing comedy gig, holding himself up and pacing like a madman. Skittish at every little noise. He snorts the Valium, and two ounces of cocaine, just to keep the dead from returning. If it's real.

_It is._

He lies on his bed, watching the room spin and float around him. Richie's body numbing out gradually.

"Rich…"

"M'tired, Eds," Richie murmurs. Hot and glistening tears drip out of the corners of Richie's fluttering eyes. "Let me sleep."

"If you do that, you'll die."

"_Okay_."

There's a helpless, mournful finality in Richie's tone that curls Eddie's lip. He's infuriated and shaking his head, plopping down next to Richie on his back. The hole in Eddie's chest a glaring dark red. Blood floods out his mouth.

"You're such an _asshole_, man. I'm trying to help here. Even when I'm in your fucking head, you _ignore_ what I'm saying."

Richie gulps, insisting softly, "Ss'not real."

"Are you seriously this fucking _dense_, Richie? _You're_ the one who called out to me just now." Eddie wipes off his mouth, to no avail, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. "_You're_ the reason I'm here. The deadlights."

Suddenly, Richie's eyes blink, focusing. He gazes at Eddie.

_"Deadlights…?"_

"Yeah," Eddie confirms lowly. "It's not permanent. You weren't affected like Beverly was. You weren't in the deadlights for so long. You'll go back to normal, but you can't do that if you choke on your own vomit and suffocate." He reaches out, and then pulls away, as if Eddie changes his mind. Richie doesn't think either of them can touch each other. "I'm _not_ letting you."

Richie's features tense.

"Eds," he mumbles, starting to grin. "Your mom visited… before you got here… _she really wanted me to fuck her_."

More tears spill as Richie laughs weakly. Eddie grins back, his teeth completely stained in dark, gory red.

"I haven't missed that."

Richie laughs, one more time, finding the strength to roll over for his cellphone while alone. Dialing 911.

*

He calls it his rehab-room.

It's where they lock him in, after Richie signs a waiver to be psychologically and medically examined during his suicide watch.

No more hallucinations. Richie spends his time in group therapy, slowly allowing his humor to no longer mask his trauma, and writing in the journal they'll take notes from for his last examination. He makes sure to leave _practical_ things like sketches of titties.

_Rich…_

Richie perks up, smiling, glancing behind him.

*


End file.
